I came away with a whole saddlebag’s worth of stories, but the most imminent is that budding filmmakers who like to do their shootin’ in the West — and I reiterate that we’re talking film here, but fake guns are OK, as evidenced by the winner of last year’s contest, “Absaroka” — should be heading to Wyoming right now to work on their entries for a another kind of shot: the one at the $25,000 first prize and some serious bragging rights. (You can watch the winning film in two parts at the end of this post, or the whole thing all nice and pretty at the Wyoming film site.)

Films can be submitted online, and the winner is decided in two rounds. First up is the public vote round, where viewers from around the Web rate the films. A judging panel will then decide the winner based on the top ten most popular entries.

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Here a bison, there a bison, everywhere a bison at Yellowstone National Park in winter.

Some criteria that the judges will keep in mind when viewing the films include cinematography, screenplay/acting, sound design, editing and overall production value.

Travel and OutWest editor Kyle Wagner grew up in Pittsburgh and lived in Lake County, Ill., and Naples, Fla., before moving to Denver in 1993, where she reviewed restaurants for Westword before moving to The Denver Post in 2002. She considers the best days to be those that involve her teenage daughters and doing something outside, preferably mountain biking or whitewater rafting.

Dean Krakel is a photo editor (primarily sports) at The Denver Post. A native of Wyoming, he has authored three books, "Season of the Elk," "Downriver" and "Krakel's West." An avid kayaker, rafter, mountain biker, trail runner, telemark skier and backpacker, Dean's outdoor adventures have taken him around the world.

Douglas Brown was raised about 30 miles west of Philadelphia in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where he spent a lot of time running around in the woods and fields (where he hunted and explored), and in the ocean (where he surfed and stared at the horizon). Now he lives in Boulder and spends as much time hiking, running, skiing and boarding the High Country (and the Boulder foothills) as possible.

Ricardo Baca is the entertainment editor and pop music critic at The Denver Post, as well as the founder and executive editor of Reverb and the co-founder of The UMS. Happy days often involve at least one of these: whitewater rafting, snowshoeing, vintage Vespas, writing, camping, live music, road trips, snowboarding or four-wheeling.